Year Zero, And Then One

I was supposed to be going to Poland with Alan for new year’s, but his Christmas bonus hadn’t come through like he hoped it would. He told me this on the phone when I was at home, and half an hour later, Casey phoned me. I hadn’t heard from her in a month, thought I never would again, and wouldn’t have minded one way or the other. ‘You need more sustenance,’ she offers, as way of explanation for her silence. But we arrange to go away together, for we both want to be out of London for the millennium. At first it’s Poland, then Naples, Oslo, Copenhagen, Portugal, in fact just about every European country until we have to settle on Dublin; the cheapest fare, and hopefully a cheap stay, for Casey’s dad has a house in Dublin with spare bedrooms. She’d been meaning to see him for the past year (!). I’m none too enthusiastic about Dublin but Casey has promised me visions of children bareback on horses riding through town (as seen in The Commitments), Black Velvet, which is Guinness and Champagne, oysters and James Joyce. It sounds good enough.

I don’t hear from Casey for the next week, until she phones me on the Friday before the Saturday we’re going, and tells me, matter-of-factly, that she’s just going to meet her dad in London. So matter-of-factly in fact, that I don’t catch its full implication straight away. Then my brain puts the two and two together. ‘Your dad’s in London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which means we’re not staying with him in Dublin?’
‘No.’
It also transpires that even if her dad wasn’t in London, he doesn’t actually live in Dublin, but thirty miles away from it.

And so, the following night we arrive in Dublin just like how it should be; late, dark, foggy and freezing, and eventually, after back and forwards between two stationary buses, we find ourselves with a lone lost Pakistani man waiting for a bus which should take us into town.

Said said he didn’t like the food, he didn’t like the weather, his stomach was bad, he had no idea what the food was, he’d been in the airport for three days and three nights, he’d never seen a multiplex cinema before, he wore a cheap tight leather jacket which made him look stiff and vaguely comical, his English was bad and he’d be the only person in this country that I’d find vaguely sympathetic and almost likable.

It had never occurred to me (I mean it was something I’d never thought about) that someone from the developing world would find the west such a culture shock. Secretly, very secretly, this was my revenge and I took a little bit of pleasure in it. Yes. This was payback time for all the stomach upsets I’d got, for all the five-hour late buses and trains, for the all the times stranded in the middle of nowhere. For dengue fever. Of course I felt sorry for him, but I was also secretly smiling. He got off the bus to find a mosque. We got off to find a hotel. We find one in a pub on the south side (everything is north or south).

We went out drinking and it didn’t really stop for three days. We went to all the wrong places, as usual. Just looking for a place with atmosphere. A good cup of coffee. A good pizza, yes, but with the right atmosphere. The atmosphere needed to be right. Atmosphere was everything. I mean, atmosphere is everything. It’s everything. All we’re looking for is things with an atmosphere. A party, yes, but also a city, a coffee shop, a house, a pub, a room, a restaurant. Romance. Like love, you can’t buy it, you can’t sell it, it just happens. I can’t find it in London, or if I can, it’s all wrong, contrived, stupid. And so with Dublin.*

Everyone has a great time in Dublin. But not us. Finally, along Temple Bar area, packed, a vaguely nice looking pizza-ish restaurant, with warmth (on a cold night in a strange city warmth can easily be swapped with atmosphere). I told Casey I’d read her emails (I'd guessed her password). I was racked with guilt. Maybe I was strange, weird. She took it well, with a smile. I paid for the meal. Even though most emails are automatically boring, just because of the notion of them (spontaneous, quick, etc), I was rather intrigued with Casey’s. But I was feeling Catholic guilt. I wanted to atone for my sins. She just looked at me and asked me my password and I told her.

Later, a biker pub downstairs where thrash metal is blasted out (in the next room a Beatles room where young beatniks in suede jackets sing harmonies then make a face at me – what have I done?) and everyone looks like circa. 1987. It is funny. Casey says humans are just a vessel for love. It goes through us, it’s not of our choosing and it’s nothing to do with us. It goes through us from outside. And choices and fate. Two feelings. It’s always the right choice. Casey says you find out the meaning of life with love. And I say no, with death. She smiles.

After: a nightclub (Aquarium?) where we sit down and can’t help but be mesmerised by the dance floor full of the saddest people we have ever seen in our lives. Casey sports black leather motorbike trousers with a red stripe going down the side, white boots and a faded, dirty denim jacket. I wear a fisherman’s coat. On the dance floor is a topless man with long straight hair going down to his arse. It’s head-banging night. He swings his hair around more vainly than a shampoo commercial. Casey says she reckons his hair is long just so he can dance in this nightclub. He adores himself. He adores his hair. People love him. I want to tell him he looks ridiculous. I so badly want to tell him he looks a dickhead.

Almost as bad is the retard. Well, I call him a retard to Casey and she hits me and goes moody. But he is. He must be all of eighteen. And he’s huge. Tall too. With a bad haircut and bad glasses and an eighties sense of fashion. In fact, no sense of fashion. It’s fair to say he was a geek, a nerd. Which is fine. But here he is dancing really intensely, shouting out lyrics, head-banging (avec shortish hair). Basically, he just looks out of place.

It’s rock metal night but everyone, well almost everyone (retard excluded) is dressed like a goth. It’s also goth night. Casey and I sit and laugh and watch the goth couples who sit together and don’t say a word to each other and look absolutely miserable. I think to myself: this is how a relationship should be: light and fun and just like friends. But what comes first: the friendship or the sex? Or both, or neither? And Casey says to me: she’s glad she’s here with me and not her (new) boyfriend. Having a partner is boring. It does involve sitting around, holding hands, not saying very much. I like Casey because we talk about everything, things you couldn’t talk about with a girlfriend. If I don’t get Casey as a girlfriend, I never want one, I say to myself. Shouldn’t it just naturally evolve from this? The goths are so funny, it’s a joke. And a little scary. And then I see someone who’s really scary.

A man with a bald head apart from a long ponytail. A long black coat. And his eyes. All black! I impulsively grab Casey’s arm. She’s like, oh yeah, black contacts, seen them before. I’m like, Jesus, he looks like an alien.

We meet Kyle and Frank who seem relatively normal, i.e. they could be in London and not be laughed at in public. Casey had been trying to score some dope in every establishment we went in. Which had been a lot. She’d go up to likely looking candidates and ask them if they knew where she could get some. Mostly, in fact totally, she’d been met by ignorance, at best, and shock and disdain at worst. But everyone seemed to concur that it was impossible to get marijuana in Dublin, let alone anything stronger. But Kyle and Frank seem to know where to get some. Hey, they’ve been to London. Casey gets on well with Frank; young, cocky, friendly, a sparkle in his kind eyes, and he likes Casey, and I ignore them both for half an hour, just watching the sad dancing, the shampoo advert and the geek have been dancing non-stop for hours, I’m starting to feel tired and sobering up. Then I’m rude to Frank, but we get to talking, and later he’s like saying to Casey, yeah I like your friend, I really know where he’s coming from, and I’m like to Casey, what’s he talking about, I haven’t told him a thing about myself. He told Casey he was an actor and me he was a milkman. It was time to go. I was bored.

Once back in our room we had a tremendous row. Casey thought I was jealous of Frank. I wasn’t, just trying to explain that he was full of shit and wanted to fuck her. Casey didn’t agree.

What can I say? I’m a selfish bastard and I want her all to myself? No. I can’t stand men hounding women? I’m just so bored of people? I mean, if they were the sort of guy who fancied Casey, I didn’t want to talk to them. If they spoke to her – I didn’t want to speak to them. If they didn’t speak to her – then I wanted to speak to them (!).

The next day we explored Dublin. In the rain, and the fog and the cold. Where the hell was the Dublin of Ryan’s daughter?

Rachel expected Bangkok to be wooden shacks, opium and sex, and Casey promised me Dublin with boys riding horses bareback in the street, oysters and Black Velvet (Guinness and Champagne). The north, where they supposedly drink cider with their Guinness on new year’s eve, is vaguely more interesting than the south. Where the hell was the atmosphere? I remember liking the river Liffey, dividing the city into north and south, just like London. We walked in the rain, then had a cup of coffee in the Habitat coffee shop, exhausted. Went back to bed. Then it was new year’s eve.

The thing about significant dates – new year’s eve 1999, 2001 – is they’re a letdown. The best way to spend a special date is to spend it boring, ordinary, and then it becomes more memorable. What did you do new year’s eve 1999? I was sitting in bed in a small, dark, over-priced sweaty B&B room in north Dublin watching cable TV while Casey coughed in her sleep next to me.

It means nothing that we’ve spent these historic dates together. I mean, I spent four Valentine day’s in a row with Rachel. That should have some meaning, no? Well it didn’t. I never find beautiful women sexy anyway. Like a beautiful painting, I don’t want to shag it, just look at it.

At five to midnight we managed to make it downstairs into the pub of our hotel. I had a Bourbon and Casey a Courvoisier. Midnight struck and I forgot to say happy new year to Casey. I was watching all the happy people singing, smiling and dancing. I nearly had a tear in my eye. Then Casey tapped me on my shoulder and wished me happy new year. We chinked glasses, downed them and went back to bed. My eyes were twitching I was so tired. We were insipid on new year's eve. “Her face had pillow marks on them” (her line).

New year’s day and the day after the papers (The Irish Mirror) were full of death. A 16 year-old girl had been killed along the coast, near Dublin. She had been sledging on her homemade toboggan, crashed and been thrown into a tree. Casey said it must have been a good way to go. Like the guy who’d fallen down drunk new year’s eve and been discovered frozen to death the next day.

‘Woman killed by beach landslide’
‘club chief “murdered by British rower”’
‘Nun, 72, killed in church attack horror’
‘Girl, 15, electrocuted crossing railway line’ (just a few minutes before midnight, new year’s eve)

We check into a hotel on the north side, something we should have done in the first place. Near the Temple Bar area, almost trendy. New Year’s day is nice and empty. Raining and cold.

Sometimes her facial features look so soft and round, melting, inviting, but most of the time they’re hard and chiseled, cold and embittered. Like with Rachel, my cigarette smoke was forever chasing Casey, hounding her, annoying her, getting in her eyes, so to speak.

We spent all evening trying to get a Black Velvet – Guinness and Champagne, one night too late. But most of the Off Licences were shut and the ones open didn’t sell champagne. SPAR only sells wine. Only one five-star hotel sells Champagne and it’s too expensive. There’s no oysters in sight either. In fact, it’s impossible to get hold of anything. Like: film for cameras, marijuana, basic stuff like that. In south Dublin they settle for cider and Guinness, and that’s fine for me. Casey won’t hear of such a thing. She buys half a bottle of Champers from the five-star hotel. Then we go back to ours.

At the steps of the Blooms hotel, we see some Scots wearing kilts. Casey, pissed, shouts out (embarrassingly), ‘Are you a punk?’ (Why, I don’t know.) She shouted again, and the Scot turned around, sees Casey, and exclaims, ‘Macey Gray!’ She seems to like this (what I think is a) form of racism. Tired of Casey’s ceaseless cravings for attention, I started walking up the stairs, then turned and saw as Casey bursts out laughing, puts her hand over her mouth and points towards the Scot. I walked into the hotel, Casey joined me and said, ‘Did you see that?’ ‘What?’ ‘Did you see his cock? He pulled up his kilt and showed his cock!’ ‘No, I missed that.’ ‘It was big, considering how cold it is.’

Casey turns on the TV in the hotel room and opens the bottle of champagne. Then, finally, without warning, I see her pink knickers (she’d told me about them; I’d fantasied about them), not actually pink for all that, but see-through black, with a pink lining. She shows them to me, from behind, exposing her behind, the pink fraying at the seams.

Then she takes her knickers off, sitting on the side of the bed, and changes into her black leggings and white top. She sits on the side of the bed, gazing dreamily at herself in the mirror. I don’t know what she sees, but finally maybe realises that guys who tell her she looks nineteen when in fact she is thirty-two tell her for one reason and one reason only, and the men who don’t fancy her actually have the guts to tell her she looks her age, and always has. She looks fucked. Maybe in a drunken state she realises this, and dreamily says, more to herself than to me, ‘Maybe I should have babies with James.’

After looking at her face, she goes to her breasts, propping them up with her hands. They’re saggy. She asks me what I think of them. She stands in the centre of the room, holding them up for me. I don’t even look; I’m watching TV, and I tell her they’re fine. What else can you say to a woman? Especially one who doesn’t fancy you? And loves a fat forty-one year old with no lips (who just happens to run a post-production company in Soho)?

But the night goes well, and we laugh and talk, laugh and talk, exercise and kick box. She touched my foot and told me how soft it was, for a man. She went on to caress it, and I pulled it away.

In bed, later, no idea of the time, but drunk, half asleep, exhausted:
I knew it was happening in real life, but I was only half-conscious, and the other half of me was dreaming this, feeling guilty about it: we were in the Irish countryside, the year was 1865, the nights were long and the days were short. We were in a school in a village. I was a teacher. Casey’s big, brown, shiny, naked body was a precursor to Joyce’s Ulysses. She was in the operating theatre, lifeless and naked on a wooden bench. I was reading her body to a class of students, reeling in guilt while doing it, but not stuttering, but knowing every teacher in Ireland will be reading her body (as part of a travelling exhibition), and feeling sorry for her, and stopping. I can’t remember the text on her body, I pulled away fast, before I got into the flow, and woke fast, hand on a buttock still, sober. Anyway, the text was written in a faded old-style manual typewriter manner.

About ten minutes later, drifting in and out of drunken sleep, I touched her face. She woke suddenly, which surprised me. ‘You just touched my face.’ ‘Sorry,’ I said. I thought it strange that she felt my hand on her face but not anywhere else. Maybe her face was more sensitive.

In the morning I decided not to tell Casey my half-dream. I wasn’t sure if she was conscious when it was happening. I mean, she had to be. I mean, she was responding. I mean, at some point she had kissed me. Kissing. What is kissing? A kiss is just a kiss, a miss, a hiss. I should have kissed the Mexican Mac Operator, the Venezuelan whore, the Cambodian princess... but I didn’t. It didn’t seem worth it. Most of the time it’s just not worth it. It makes things more complicated than they need be.

Finally, empty, on New Year’s day, Dublin has a bit of character. No shops are open. There’s no people. Is it just shops and people that makes every city in the western world identical?

The next day, Tuesday, packed with millions of people, the shops open, it could be any place, like London. It feels like London. People walk fast, and we bump into people, and walk the wrong way, feeling like stupid tourists, which we are.

In the cafe of the museum I told her about the two nights where we’d got, well, physical. I wondered why it hadn’t been laughed off in conversation before. I knew it had happened. But I told her, rather too casual, perhaps, too flippant, and she just stared at me unbelieving, an unbelieving smile on her face. ‘What?’ I knew already I had gone past the point of no return. I shouldn’t have told her, but I went on, wanting to put it all to an end, knowing, stuttering...

‘What are you talking about?’
‘—’
Incredulous.
I half thought she remembered, but half knew she didn’t and wanted to hurt her.
From now on, to say the least, things would be a bit strained between us.

On our last day we took the DART train to Sandycove and Glasthule, where Ulysses begins. A miserable day, except for the sky, on the way back. The sky was blue, a shock of blue, so blue, blue, blue, like an ocean, no one looking up but us two – us two freaks from London just looking up at the sky like we’d never seen a sky before. We hadn’t seen a blue sky in Ireland before.

Like on the DART train – one window with a different tint to the rest – making the sea look blue, green, when in fact it was grey, grey. By this point she was sitting at the other end of the carriage, pretending to be engrossed in The Times. She read Tuesday’s The Time’s from cover to cover.

I thought we were meant to fly kites on a beach in Japan, eat apples naked, dance through tulips, ride horses bareback through the Brecon Beacons, build our own wooden shack on the coast of Nova Scotia, work (design/film/photography/painting/writing) from home, and raise beautiful babies. Of course, it was never written in stone, and it never happened. Those kind of things rarely do. I ran the gauntlet of emotions to her, for nothing. I never had the guts to tell her all this. She would have just laughed.

Nicky (at Auto Trader magazine; a Mac operator, deeply pretentious) said a man doesn’t become interesting until he reaches thirty. She’s twenty three, and I didn’t ask her what age a woman becomes interesting.

She’s so hard to pin down (in London), I love going away with her. I love having her for the duration of the holiday, knowing (well, half-knowing) that she’s never going to leave my side, she’s mine, all mine, for a weekend, a week. I knew this was going to be our last journey together. I wanted the flight to be delayed, fog, then once we took off, why not, a crash, and I save her. We had a final pint of Guinness, and a final argument.

Jesus, I sat and waited forty-five minutes for her. I thought I was never going to see her again. I went to the toilet. The hotel had a burst water pipe and all the rooms were without hot water. I started to get the fear. Jesus. Maybe I did imagine making out with Casey. Christ. Maybe I was going crazy. Jesus Christ. Maybe I drunkenly dreamt it. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t distinguish between reality and fantasy. It had the hallmarks of insanity. I was insane. Weird. A pervert. Jesus Christ. I tried to change the subject and thought about Dublin. Jesus. Jesus was a harpoon.

We both agreed that we both lived 90% of our lives in our minds. Casey said her God, her ideal partner and her life were in her head, and so was mine.

But I don’t know, I don’t know, when I with her, there’s no one else in the whole world, there’s no one else I want to talk to, look at, or be with. Bob Dylan could be sitting at the coffee table next to us, and I’d be like, Bob, could you keep it down a bit. Her body is a Columbian housewife, her mind a little girl and an old spinster, a teenager and mother, all in the space of ten minutes.

But back in London at Heathrow airport, she was a new girl, mobile phone, I wasn’t interested, nor was she, and walked away before she did, to the toilet, a cigarette, a newspaper, change for a ten pound note, a breath of fresh air.

I guess after a few months of Champagne dinners and pizzas without meat or wheat and Woody Allen movies with James, it didn’t matter about the size of his cock or his non-lips or his dull mind or his three children or his... What does it matter? Let it all go.

At least I finally got my books back, slightly tattered.

It took Alan to put things into perspective for me. ‘Look, she’s fucked, flaky and fickle. She’s at the stage in life ... her clock’s ticking ... she needs a man with stability ... she’s been fucked about so much in her life ... she needs someone reliable ... with financial acumen ... okay, so he’s forty-one and ugly ... but he may be a nice guy ... and he does own a post-production company in Soho ... There comes a stage in a woman’s life when she needs stability, not excitement.'

I said to Alan, ‘Man, I’ve got to get rich,’ but it lacked conviction, and he just chuckled. I was never going to be rich.

After a few days back in London I checked my emails in the local cybercafe. My password had been changed, and it took me the next day getting a new one. I had to write to Microsoft twice, and get them to send me a new password to my dad’s email address. At the back of my mind I was thinking, no, it wasn’t Casey, she’s not like that. She’s fickle and fucked, but not vindictive.

When I got my new password, and the Mexican girl at the cafe helped me change the language from German back to English, I realised every email Casey had ever written me had been deleted. I was shocked and shaken, and even got the fear again. Maybe I had never known her. Maybe I dreamt her. This lasted some seconds, then it passed.

At the risk of sounding pretentious, I read that Hemingway could never write about a place until he left it, and I knew I’d never be able to write about Casey until she left me.

I liked her because she had standards. A good cup of coffee. A good pizza. The atmosphere needed to be right. Atmosphere was everything. I mean, atmosphere is everything. It’s everything. All we’re looking for is things with an atmosphere. A party, yes, but also a city, a coffee shop, a house, a pub, a room, a restaurant. Romance. Like love, you can’t buy it, you can’t sell it, it just happens. I can’t find it in London – atmosphere or love, or if I can, it’s all wrong, contrived, stupid, self-conscious.*

What makes stereotypes stereotypes? Truth is what. Ireland is backwards. The people are a bit backdated. It’s true. It’s impossible to get hold of anything. Maybe it’s the time of the year. Of course. Maybe it’s just me.

And you know what? I don’t like Guinness.
‘—’

*Further repetition about atmosphere can also be found here.

(Dublin, Ireland, 2000; you – as well as me – will be pleased to learn that this was the last journey with Casey, and we never got in touch with each other again. Probably for the best. Collectively titled Four Journeys in a Year, here they all are again: The Cherry Tree (a sort of introduction); The Stowaway; Codeine Nights; Still/Rise: The World is Enough; and Year Zero, And Then One (this one). If this blog isn't a form of catharsis, I don't know what is.

Still/Rise: the World is Enough

'I like the smile on your fingertips,
I like the way that you move your hips,
I like the cool way you look at me.
Everything about you is bringing me misery.'
– Bob Dylan, Buckets of Rain

On Friday night I went out with Alan and my NZ cousin, Chris, to some pubs in the West End. We called on Grace who works as a barmaid at the First and Last on Dover Street. Then we went to a tacky night club in Covent Garden. I liked it, it was kinda fun. People were dancing and laughing and kissing. I like seeing happy couples and smiles, it makes me feel happy. It was all a bit of a joke. it looked like it was full of people from Essex. A hen night or two.

I thought there was a girl who was giving Alan the eye. I saw her look at him a couple of times. I told Alan and ten minutes later he plucks up enough courage to go and talk to her. 'Fuck off,' she says, and walks away. Alan dances to a cover version of the theme song from Only Fools and Horses. After we've all danced for a bit, Alan has a bit more luck: two pretty teenage German girls. He dances with them for a bit, then the three of them go and sit down. Me and my cousin are standing around looking like idiots. I tell Chris to go and join Alan and the Germans. 'Why?' he asks. Just go, I tell him. What for? He asks. Just go, I tell him, and I push him. He joins them, then it's just me standing there like an idiot. I go and join them all. I'm tired now. I don't even talk to the Germans, but they seem nice.

At about one we all went home. The tubes had shut; I waited for a bus home. A handsome Asian man kept looking at me. He winked at me. I was tempted. I was bored. The bus came and I went.

When I got home I put the key into the front door. It wouldn't open. I kicked it. I knocked on it. I tried to force the key. Nothing. I knocked on my neighbour's door. It was raining lightly but steadily and I was drunk. Sue, my neighbour, eventually opens her door, none too pleased. For some reason, because of the rain, I guess, she wants me to take off my white shirt. I won’t. I climb out her window and over to my bedroom window, next door, which is slightly open. I climb through. The front door lock had got caught. It's now a matter of hours before I have to meet Casey at Liverpool station.

The train journey to Stanstead was completely pleasant. It seemed that we left London abruptly, with buildings suddenly just ending and then we’re in countryside.

If it wasn’t for the Guggenheim and Go! doing cheap flights to Bilbao, the city would have stayed the poor, insignificant, industrial place it always was. As it stands now, thanks to Frank Gehry, ‘most significant architect of the last century’, etc, Bilbao has transformed itself into a cultural beacon. All that remains of its past industrialisation is a chimney. Who says art doesn’t have the power to change? At least at a superficial level.

Bilbao is: freaks, gays, winos, rudeness, coffee, mantequilla, Jeff Koons, no food, impossible to get drunk on ŕose but a large G&T helps. Bagpipes near the beach (sponsored by Go! airlines).

In a gay cafe, the only place in Bilbao open past ten, Casey was ruder and nastier to me than anyone else has been ever. I won’t go into detail. I went to the bathroom. I locked the door. I burst into tears. I looked at myself in the mirror. These were the first tears for many years. My face was red, my eyes were red, I looked like shit. I splashed water on my face. Looked at myself in the mirror again. I looked the same. I went back out. Casey could tell I’d been crying. She apologised.

The film Holy Smoke seemed to echo our relationship. I'd see it on DVD when I got back.

On a train to the beach I was looking out at the factories, the graffiti, the cranes, and I knew she was looking at me. After a while, I looked back at her. We were looking at each other for a bit. She was looking like she hated me. She turned away, casual and cool, detached and bitchy. I continued looking. Then I looked elsewhere.

We went into the Basque shop in Bilbao and bought souvenirs of Northern Spain. The idea of north and south held us rapt. Stickers of Che Guevara. A car sticker saying ER, another one saying CANT. The fun with language. Still/Rise, there it was again: graffiti on a garage door like an underground movie title. No one knows where the Basque language comes from. It has no relation to any Latin or European language: it looks and sounds more like a cross between Chinese and Welsh.

Always on our last night, our last day, do we find our way – we get the point of things, we know our way around, we’re natives, and then it’s time to leave. It’s probably for the best. Every journey feels like it’s going to be our last together. As soon as we arrive at a place, she’s already looking forward to the next place we’re going.

Casey had told me about her pink knickers, one night in a French restaurant in Soho, just before we had an argument, and she'd called me a freak. Before then, I'd had no interest in her sexually at all. I'd always liked her eyes. I'd always liked her mouth and her hands. I liked the clothes she wore. Isn’t that a song? Anyway, I didn’t get to see her pink knickers.

When we arrived back at Standstead, I knew me needing the toilet at just the wrong time would be a defining moment. I had to go. I went.

When the lift was coming down I heard the whistle for the train, and then I heard the train departing. I looked at my watch: llpm. There wouldn't be another train for half an hour. I knew Casey had got on it. I said to myself: if she's got on it, we're never going to see each other again, we're never going to speak to each other again. If she hasn't got on it, we're going to be friends for years. We're going to be lovers. We're going to make films together. She’s going to have my children. The lift door opened and my heart was beating fast. I thought I saw her but it wasn't her. I bought a ticket and walked up and down the vast, dark, cold platform. There was no Casey.

When I get back I’m cheered up by Alan's email girls: He’s got Algerian, South African, Indian, Argentinian and Spanish, but he’s not really getting anywhere with them.

I went home and phoned Casey every day for a week. On the Saturday I must have phoned her ten times, when I was with John. We went to an Alcoholics Anonymous disco in Mile End, just for the fun of it, but it was no fun; obviously there was no alcohol, and everyone looked really tense. A year later John would be dead. Casey wasn’t answering her phone. Finally she did, on Sunday. She said she’d been ill, had a rash, and hadn’t been answering her phone. We had been seeing each other every week for about a year, but now something had changed and we didn’t see each other that much anymore. And when we did, Casey was late or in a bad mood. Does the heat affect thinking, creativity, sexuality and temper? Obviously. And the cold?

(Bilbao, Spain, 1999)

Codeine Nights

EXT. BEACH. SUNSET.
A WOMAN, looking like a black Brixton prostitute (her words) with turquoise leggings, big gold earrings, etc, takes off her high heeled shoe and throws it at a man, white, thirty (tirty! – almost), wearing a pin-striped suit and cheap black brogues. The man turns and catches it in his hand, just before it hits him in the head. He turns. They face each other, ready to do battle. Just like in a film. In fact, it is a film. Or at least it was going to be (the final scene was to be a chase on horseback through Brixton High Street).

Casey and I planned to write our kick-boxing film (this was around the time of The Matrix and when we both did kick boxing), working title Grey Belt or South London Kick Boxer, as well as act parts of it with a camcorder. As it turned out, Casey, two days before we left, got a toe infection and could barely walk let alone produce side kicks.

We flew to Marseilles. My uncle and aunt picked us up, and we drove to their villa near Nice, a beautiful place with a vineyard, swimming pool and Wendy house the size of a large shed, for their young daughter.

Amazingly (for me), I woke at 6:30am to take photos of the day beginning, a dip in the pool, coffee, breakfast, etc, long before Casey was even up. When she finally did rise she was in a mood at me for waking her. Later we are driven to the supermarket, then to Mougins, where we stayed together for the week.

Mougins is the village near Cannes where Picasso spent the last thirteen years of his life. Why, we’re not sure. It’s a village made for people rather than cars, which is nice. The roads are narrow and more like alleys. But once you leave the village, there are no people, no pavements, only cars. Just like L.A. Me and Casey, sans voiture, are stuck here. The village is atop a hill; it’s circular. There are expensive restaurants and tacky art galleries but not a sign of Picasso.

We get taxis to Cannes; there was no other way. On the beach, we are all the same, like sheep or pigs. Devoid of suits and skirts, almost naked, exposed to the sun and each other, it is not sexy. We all look foolish and don’t mind.

Even breasts don’t look sexy on the beach. I see Casey’s for the first time. They just look like lumps of flesh. Which they are. I guess it’s about context. I’m sure they’d be sexy, say, in bed. The naked four-year old girl looks exactly the same as the topless twenty-six-year old woman. Just a person, devoid of dignity and clothes. We’re all the same underneath, give or take.

Cannes near sunset, along the promenade, just like Manila bay. The boats in the distance, the hazy blue mountains, the promenade, the light, the palm trees; even the people and their stances.

Back in Mougins, we watched a lot of videos, bad ones, children’s ones, French TV. I read a bit of Samarkand by Amin Maalouf and Ratner’s Star by Don DeLitto; Casey is reading Ballard's Cocaine Nights. I did basically what I do at home, read books and watch films. At least I was doing it in another location, with a nice coffee in the morning and Casey. We were going to live together. Make films. Write. Paint. Casey bursts into tears at some point. I'm naked except for a bed sheet wrapped around me like a toga. She gets another toe infection which reminds me of one I had in Morocco.

On our last night we went to a restaurant in Mougins for the first time. We deserved it. We showered and both looked nice and clean. Casey said we had that just made love look. The restaurant was lovely and the bill was over £100. The wine alone came to £25. Something came over me and I told Casey I’d pay the bill. Fuck it. Casey ended up paying for the wine.

(Mougins, France, 1999)

Previously with Casey: The Cherry Tree and The Stowaway

The Stowaway

'I'm sure your thoughts are not with me,
But with the country to where you're going.'
– Bob Dylan, Boots of Spanish Leather

On our trip we discovered two things: the journey is the destination, and accent is everything. We didn't discover much about each other, but that's not the point of travelling. Ruby always used to tell me I was the most boring aspect of whichever country we visited together. Besides, I didn't talk that much anyway, and Casey stopped talking to me altogether in Tangier.

As I sat upstairs on the number 41 bus going home, the condensation covered the windows. It was 4:30am, the bus was packed and I realised how much I missed her. I felt sleepy and drunk, but liked the way the bus curved the corners and I didn't know where I was or where I was going. It felt like the last mysterious trip, and I felt a sadness as well as a happiness. I missed her as soon as we parted at Victoria station, New Year's eve morning. I hadn't realised how much I liked her. It was an instant hit in the stomach as soon as we parted. Like with love or being punched.

Casey had phoned me on the Saturday to ask me if I wanted to go to Goa, India with her. No, I said, but what about Morocco, it's cheaper and nearer. She thought that was a good idea and on the Sunday I booked two return tickets for Malaga, Spain.

Two or three things I know about her. She will always remember certain things about the trip. The stowaway; the soup in Fes; the cafe in Tetouan; sitting down in the lounge on the boat in Tangier, heading towards Algeciras, Spain, feeling warmth and comfort, a bit of love too, for the first time in days.

Our plane was delayed for four hours at Gatwick. It was my first time at Gatwick. Casey had been there before a few years ago, and noticed that it's changed. All I could see were freaks and geeks, badly dressed ugly people. An airport being a perfect microcosm of society. We sat in a pub for a few hours, with businessman in suits over the way, like they'd just finished work, and we forgot it was an airport. Casey with her Courvoisier and ginger ale, me with my lager. She bought cream shoes at the airport for £40, especially for the journey. The shoes were in a shop a few doors along from the pub. Casey came back and described them to me, and I dashed along to have a look at them. We had all our luggage at the pub, so both of us couldn't look at the shoes together. I think it may have been the fourth time I went to the shop that I saw the right ones, agreed they were nice, and she bought them.

The next morning in Malaga, a crisp, sunshining day with sunglasses, cheap cigarettes and lovely coffee, sitting outside the cafe. It feels nice, the sun, the coffee, Casey. She’s extremely excited and can’t contain herself. We both feel lighter and agree we should live here, which is something I’ve said about every country I’ve ever been to. But we like Spain’s pace of life, and its coffee.

A train through to Algeciras. We both love train rides and the possibility of them. Train systems are also a microcosm of society, but perhaps everything is. Spanish trains are great. You can smoke on them. The seats turn into beds. The landscape rolls by and I realise my smallness and I feel meek but content, just aware of the general scheme of things.

Casey’s got her mind on other things: the man writing opposite us she thinks is a writer. She imagines a life with him, in Ronda, where he gets off. He looks selfish but wears Clark’s shoes, so he must be all right. (We stopped off at Ronda on our way back... maybe Casey had Bruce Chatwin in her thoughts: in 1978 he rented a house in Ronda for five months to write his second book, The Viceroy of Ouidah. He filled twenty yellow legal writing pads with his Mont Blanc pen filled with Asprey's brown ink. He said that Ronda looked like an 'iced cake'. Though gay, Chatwin did like black women with big behinds.)

Rainy and dirty in a cafe in Algerciras as the electricity goes off and everything is dark just as a dirty old gypsy woman tries to sell me her dirty bread.

From Algericas to Ceuta, in Morocco, but Spanish and it was Christmas Eve and we ended up in a cafe with a group of people. Ceuta is just weird. Not exactly Muslim, not exactly Spanish. I don’t think Ceuta itself knows what it is. In the bar in Ceuta the crazy, annoying black woman who just talked and talked and laughed and laughed to me non-stop for hours. She stroked her arm and repeatedly said, 'Allemande, Anglais, yes, Francais, yes, Moroc, no.' Then she’d point upstairs and make a sleeping sign with her hands. ‘Yes?’ No, no, no and no.

Ceuta on Christmas day and everything seems shut, except McDonald's by the beach. We have a Coke. The whole town is deserted. We wander and find a nice cafe, the only one open. Coffee and bread. Merry Christmas.

We start walking to the border: the border into Morocco proper. We start walking in the wrong direction, of course. Then we get a taxi to the border. Overland borders. Kinda fascinating: on one side, Ceuta, cleanliness, on the other, Morocco, what looks like a garbage dump.

Even though Driton, my Kosovan friend at work in London, had been on Ramadan for the past few weeks, for some reason I didn't connect the two. It was only when I lit a cigarette on the other side of Ceuta, which was Morocco, with everyone looking at me, that the realisation came. When finally people started shouting at me then throwing stones at me, I stopped smoking altogether during the day.

Walking by myself in Tetouan to find a pack of cigarettes at night, I feel no weight, just the feeling of the night and strangers greet me, and when I ask one man where I can buy cigarettes he says he doesn't know but gives me one of his Marlboros instead. When I go back I say to Casey, 'I've just realised I'm always going to be alone but that's how I like it.' Casey looks shocked. I say, 'Oh, I don't mean here, now with you. I like being with you. I mean in the general scheme of things, I'm always going to be alone.'

Winter in Fes: something almost romantic about it. We found the only cafe open in Fes during the day. The curtains were drawn, the lights turned off. The door slightly ajar. I felt nervous, and got up and closed it slightly. Other tourists filtered in. The atmosphere was sober. We knew we were being bad. We chained smoked cigarettes and coffee. My stomach felt bad, and I felt guilty.

In the Sheraton hotel, Fes, in happy hour, two beers for the price of one. A bit of luxury and a beer, is all we want. We watch the beautiful white girl with blonde straight hair sitting across the room. Casey thinks she's a model. She chats with the waiter. Next to us a prostitute comes and sits down.

I told Casey of my dream when we were on the boat from Tangier to Algeciras. It was dark and I was in the countryside. There was a huge sewage pipe running through the middle of the countryside. The pipe asked me what I wanted. I could have anything I wanted. I asked the pipe for love. A minute later, out came three pieces of green toast and the pipe told me they were love. Green toast.

Some days later, after we had parted, I had another dream. They are the only two dreams I have remembered in months. I dreamt I kissed her. Just a kiss, but we were locked together, as if forever. Our faces morphed and became one. It wasn't very nice.

The night and the light and the rain of Tangier. Or, as the French Canadians say: 'Danger Tangier'. In the taxi Casey said, 'Maybe we were only meant to meet so we could go to Morocco together.' I said nothing, but hoped that wasn't so. There were other places to go too.

We sat at a waterside restaurant in Tangier. It was cold and raining. I was excited about being in Tangier, but Casey obviously wasn't. We only wanted soup at the restaurant. We hadn't eaten properly for days and soup was all we could manage. 'With chips?' asks our waiter. No, just soup, with bread. A basket of bread was lying on our table. The waiter went to take it away. I pulled it back. Apparently we weren't allowed bread if we only ordered soup, which cost 5 dirhams. The waiter and I were playing tug of war with the basket of bread. Casey got up and stormed out. I shouted at her. She didn't look back. I let her go.

I walked out of the restaurant. I watched her as she walked up the hill to our hotel. I continued walking along the waterfront. A pretty couple sitting at a table outside a restaurant turned and smiled at me. I continued walking. I got to the point where the restaurants ended and it got dark and dodgy. I turned back. I needed some food. I stopped at the restaurant where the pretty couple were sitting. The man said something to me. I said, 'What?' He continued talking to me in French, and I said 'What?' again, and asked him if he spoke English. He said he did and asked me where I was from. 'England,' I said. Him and his girlfriend were French Canadian. They were young and pretty, and just a little boring, but a pleasant respite after days and nights spent with Casey. We spoke of Morocco, and I got my soup, avec du pain, and a Coke. They found me funny. I found them a willing audience. I asked them if they wanted to meet later in a bar, with Casey. I finished my soup and Coke, and agreed to meet them in fifteen minutes. I went back to our hotel room, Casey was moaning and pissed off, but managed to persuade her to come to the Marco Polo bar with me. It took her ten minutes or so to get ready, and we left.

When we arrived in the bar, it was full of prostitutes, dark and sleazy. The women looked more Asian than Arab. The barman wouldn't serve Casey a drink. He thought she was a Muslim, and Muslim women aren't allowed to drink during Ramadan. He inspects her passport for like five minutes, looking up at Casey, and then down again at her passport.

It felt good on the boat back. I was warm and Casey was in better spirits. There was a strange feeling lasting a few minutes where everyone around us seemed relaxed and happy too. Many people were sleeping, some were just relaxing, thinking, drinking, talking. I felt a feeling of love from all around me. I felt it inside myself, permeating my whole body. I told Casey. She said, love comes from without, not from within,' and I knew what she meant. I might have said I felt a love for her, but I didn't. I don't really say things like that to women anymore.

During Ramadan, food began to have a simple, almost spiritual and religious connotation. Our daily evening soup, bread and eggs had a simplicity and ritual significance bordering on the religious. And tasted great too.

On the train to Tangier, the passengers in our carriage felt unique. There was me, English and New Zealand, Casey, English and Jamaican, an Algerian, two young Moroccan men and an old Moroccan guy. The Algerian had a laptop. Casey said he looked like her father. I made everyone laugh with tales of Algeria, but Casey was not amused.

Suddenly, a black hand with pink fingernails appears from under my seat, just like in an old horror film. The hand was attached to a man, who is presently pulled out from under the seat.
'Vous ete derange?' The Algerian asks him.
'Non.' The man with the hand replies. He speaks French and is from Mali. He’s been travelling illegally from Mali for several days.

It's obvious that Casey fancies the Algerian, and when he goes to get up and leave, at a station just before Tangier, Casey goes all flustered and follows him out of the carriage. I feel pangs of jealousy; I can't help it. A minute later, I follow them. The Algerian has already left the train, and Casey is there outside the toilet, still a bit flustered. I wonder if she went to kiss him or swap addresses, but I don't ask. Of course, I love her.

We’d been on the bus to Fes all day. We were starving. When we approach Fes it is almost dark. The bus pulls into the station and everyone literally jumps off and runs into the nearest cafe. We do too. We sit at a table, illuminated by bare light bulb. We wait for our soup, bread and egg. After eating, a Moroccan woman comes over to Casey, sits down next to her, and starts speaking to Casey in Arabic, which Casey doesn’t understand, then French, which Casey doesn’t understand, and finally pigeon English, which Casey does understand, just. The woman thinks Casey is Moroccan and I am her French husband. She wants to know how easy it is for Moroccan women to marry European men. Casey has to explain.

(Spain, Morocco; December 1999)

We went on four journeys together in the space of a year. During the last one, to Dublin, we had a falling out, and never spoke again.

The Cherry Tree

She said she liked living in Camberwell because of its abundant, open sky. The buildings are low and the streets are wide and you can see the sky. She didn’t like south-west London. She found the buildings too high and the roads too narrow. She didn't like that lack of sky.

The cherry tree looked a long way off as I stepped into her garden. I looked past the tall nettles and at the back in the left-hand corner. The cherry tree stood alone, past the nettles, like a small vision of Eden in an otherwise Hades of a concrete back garden. I saw ripe cherries on the tree and said, ‘the cherries look ripe.’ She said, ‘yes, they’re ripe. They’re just right. But I hate going out there. I always sting my legs and crunch snails. I hate the sound of snails being crushed. I’m too scared to go over there.’

There was a short silence.

I felt like a contestant on the TV series the Crystal Maze with Richard O'Brian. I was about to say I’d pick some but she said again, ‘I hate going over there’, and said it like she was expecting me to go over there.

But all I said was ‘yes’ as I still stared at the cherries in the distance like a dream and the possibility of them. I didn’t get the cherries and I didn’t get the girl. It was probably for the best.